Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

EVENTS

Kevin O’Leary Happy for Billions of Poor People

I don’t know who Kevin O’Leary is, but he apparently has a TV show. And when told that 85 people have as much wealth as 3.5 billion poor people, he raves about what a wonderful thing that is. Because apparently it helps starving children in developing countries aspire to be Warren Buffett. Or something.

I got a chance to catch part of that show the last time I was in Canada. This tool was arguing against unionizing factories in sweatshop economies “because unions are evil”. That’s about as sophisticated as his reasoning gets, I suppose. I changed the channel after that.

I sometimes get the impression that the psychopathy he exudes is a persona, a comedy act to see how outrageous he can be and still be taken seriously. Other times I’m convinced his assholery is entirely genuine.

Ibis@11: He is an asshole for sure, but there is nothing genuine about him.
He’s a loud mouthed salesman that got lucky and sold a turkey to Mattell for a lot of money.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_O%27Leary
His giant ego tells him that his success is due to his brilliance and his”productivity” just because the invisible hand of the market inserted some horseshoes up his ass.

Just one example out of many (many) examples of what it actually takes to be rich. You don’t need to be especially intelligent, and you don’t even need to work as hard as they claim (no, a business meeting out on a 4 hour golf round is *not* work). All you really need to do is give up all empathy and humanity for everyone who isn’t a personal friend…the most important personal friend is your money and trampling on everyone else in the name of your most important friend is not only perfectly acceptable; it’s one of the most efficient means to get rich.

Glenn E Ross“How many of the 85 richest people he holds up as incentive for the billions living in abject poverty actually started life in abject poverty?”
That’s not fair. It’s not his fault that poor people are all lazy.

Doofus O’Leary is the media soul clone of O’Reilly and pretty much exists for the O’Reilly crowd up here in Canuckistan. He’s also one of the ‘dragons’ on the Canadian version of Dragons Den, where they make reality tv out of people trying to sell venture products like desperate little monkeys. His main topics are Finance and private/political uses thereof. He’s always happy to play on US tv with the big boys.

The Lang in Lang/O’Leary is a progressive finance woman, who is there pretty much to represent sanity and get run over by O’Leary’s bombastic bullshit and hahah take a joke misogyny. O’Leary runs his mouth because it pays and he knows he’s online to ‘balance’ out the cries of foul unbalanced socialist satanism leveled against the CBC. He’s a sign the Ceeb’s structure and senior management is taking a shit kicking from the present neocon government.

I wouldn’t doubt that O’Leary, like O’Reilly (as testified by D.Silverman) turns it all on when the cameras roll, to keep the rightwing rubes happy, and sees no conflict with turning it off when he steps off mic.